Ministry of Moral Panic

About this book

* Winner of the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize for Fiction * Winner of the 2016 Singapore Book Award for Fiction * Longlisted for the 2014 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award * Selected by The Business Timesas one of the Top 10 English Singapore books from 1965-2015 Meet an over-the-hill Pop Ye-ye singer with a faulty heart, two conservative middle-aged women holding hands in the Galapagos, and the proprietor of a Laundromat with a penchant for Cantonese songs of heartbreak. Rehash national icons: the truth about racial riot fodder-girl Maria Hertogh living out her days as a chambermaid in Lake Tahoe, a mirage of the Merlion as a ladyboy working Orchard Towers, and a high-stakes fantasy starring the still-suave lead of the 1990s TV hit serial The Unbeatables. Heartfelt and sexy, the stories of Amanda Lee Koe encompass a skewed world fraught with prestige anxiety, moral relativism, sexual frankness, and the improbable necessity of human connection. Told in strikingly original prose, these are fictions that plough, relentlessly, the possibilities of understanding Singapore and her denizens discursively, off-centre. Ministry of Moral Panicis an extraordinary debut collection and the introduction of a revelatory new voice.